Shock In The Eye!

Here's something that happened to me two days ago. I hired four studio lights for a shoot (this I normally do when I'm shooting in another city). The camera was a Mamiya RB67, connected to one of the lights with a cable.

Now, you know how it gets.. sometimes, you focus so hard on the ground glass that when you look up, both your eyes are actually focussing on different points. I always found that amusing.

This time, it went a step further. I was barefoot in the studio. About an hour into the shoot, I get this rather powerful electric shock straight up my eye. My eyelid fluttered like a flag at full mast on a windy day for a minute. And I developed a tic in that eye for the next few hours... my eyelid would involutarily jerk every few seconds. And then it started watering for another hour or so, before it went back to normal.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this may sound funny, but you really don't want something like this to happen to you, especially when you are trying to shoot models who are supposed to have a 'solemn' look.

Leaking capacitor? At that point, I didn't care. The light was got down and packed away. I've heard of leaking flash capacitors in flash units giving photographers a mighty jolt. But getting one in the eye just about made my day.

hehe you bet i was also barefoot (only socks) - i got shocks in my eyelid and hands (in the hand i got them by those tinny screws of my camera) - but not that big shocks those small ones but because the eye is more sensitive than the hand its weird (not sure if the studio was well grounded! )

In the dim dark ,dark days inthe dimdark darkrooms of the then Portsmouth College of Art we had a couple of students who took a dim view of photo hygene,they brightend up the whole college by not washing fixy hands,result--crystals in the switches--result--every body jumping!!